The heart of ministry
Chris Cartwright reflects on the opportunities we have for a fresh adventure in loving and caring for people.
Best-selling author and pastor John Maxwell tells the story of a time when he was the senior leader of a large church in Southern California.
One morning was standing in the church lobby talking to some of his team, when a young staff member, arriving for the first day in his new job, rushed past them without a word.
John immediately excused himself from the conversation and followed the staff member down the corridor.
As he caught up with him, the young staffer was hastily unpacking his bag and sitting down at his new desk.
“What are you doing?” Pastor John asked him.
“Starting work,” the young guy replied.
“No,” said John, “you just passed your work in the lobby.”
Maxwell uses this simple illustration to make a powerful point.
In his hurry to get to work this keen and motivated young leader had rushed past his new work colleagues without even giving them the time of day.
Maxwell then brings the punchline: people are your work.
People matter. Relationships are at the heart of our ministry and our mission for Christ.
Over the past two years, beyond the data and statistics, we have witnessed the extraordinary impact of huge global forces on all our lives.
Wave after wave of upheaval from war and conflict, a paralysing global pandemic, an economic tsunami and growing social inequality and injustice have brought over-whelming consequences to people, to families and to communities everywhere.
As we seek to follow Jesus in our real-time and real-world settings and circumstances, he calls us to serve ‘flesh and blood’ people.
That is the core of the Christian gospel.
People need Jesus and Jesus loves people so much that he pursues them.
Some of the most vivid gospel stories (the prodigal son, the shepherd who leaves the 99 for the one, the Good Samaritan) seem intended to shock us and provoke us out of all the things that lead us to variously miss, withdraw, ignore, avoid or distance ourselves from the people in need all around us.
Yet, as our communities and neighbourhoods reel from the increasing pressures of modern living, many seem to be crying out for hope, for help and for genuine human relationship.
What an opportunity this is for followers of Jesus to follow him into a fresh adventure of loving and caring for people.
Every person has a human longing to know and feel that they are noticed, valued and loved.
Our ‘Great Commission’ requires us to build new community relationships, first with one another, and then with others.
Not just with those who ‘like us’ or ‘are like us’, but with those beyond our current boundaries and preferences, who perhaps don’t like us or who we don’t yet know or understand.
The first church in Jerusalem went on that journey, as recorded in Acts 2.
It wasn’t easy or automatic but, over time, they grew from friendship into fellowship: that ‘bound together in a common cause or bond’ relationship which united them beyond comfort, personal choice or convenience.
I remember one Christian leader suggesting this journey could be as simple as walking across the room, or across the street.
Can I suggest that God is calling us to take simple steps to what seems an overwhelming challenge of befriending, of drawing others into fellowship and shared relationship where we can show as well as tell the love of Jesus.
Why not ask the Holy Spirit to help you to ‘notice’ someone around you whom you could draw alongside and seek to be a friend to?
Or, if you are already part of a group of people whether socially, at work or in your church community, ask him to show you some fresh ways you can be a help and support to those he has placed you amongst.
Look around your circle, your church, your community, and see who God begins to put on your heart.
Thinking, praying and looking for opportunity to be a blessing to those around you is often the doorway through which God begins to bring change and blessing into our lives as well as the lives of those we seek to bless.
This article first appeared in the September 2022 edition of Direction Magazine. For further details please click here.
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